January 29, 2026
Before tweets, there were flame wars
Usenet personality
Before social media, wild forum legends ruled—comments are reigniting the old flame wars
TLDR: A look back at infamous Usenet oddballs—moon demolition, UFO cures, MI5 paranoia—has commenters reviving internet folklore. The thread clashes over alleged state-backed spammers, jokes that B1FF invented weird Twitter, and memories of court-ordered bans shaping today’s online drama.
Forget TikTok—before social media, the internet’s earliest message boards called Usenet birthed true chaos gremlins. The article revisits its cult celebs: Alexander Abian, the math prof who swore blowing up the Moon would end disasters; Robert E. McElwaine, king of CAPS-LOCK conspiracies; Archimedes Plutonium, who declared the universe a giant plutonium atom; and MI5Victim, convinced British spies controlled his life. It’s weird, it’s wild, it’s history.
But the comments are the show. The hottest fight: bediger4000 challenges the old tale of “Serdar Argic,” alleging a Turkish-government–backed grad student and a complicit early ISP “pink contract”—a claim that sends skeptics demanding receipts. Nostalgia hits hard as _qua quips that B1FF would thrive on weird Twitter, while duodecimal deadpans that Archimedes Plutonium “might have been wrong,” the kind of dry roast Usenet perfected. Then the tone snaps from LOL to yikes: huhkerrf resurfaces a 1999 court order banning a skiing fanatic after a months-long flame war and death threats—a reminder that moderation drama is older than Facebook. And yes, someone asks if John Titor warned us from the future.
Overall, the crowd is split between gleeful nostalgia and forensic myth-busting, with a side of “nothing’s changed.” Different decade, same internet energy—and the comments are loving it.
Key Points
- •A “Usenet personality” is an Internet celebrity known for gaining notoriety through postings on Usenet newsgroups.
- •Alexander Abian became notable for prolific, unconventional theories (e.g., destroying the Moon to stop disasters) and authored a 1965 mathematics book.
- •Robert E. McElwaine posted fringe-science, conspiracy-themed essays; his Usenet posts ended after 1998, and he died in 2008 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
- •Archimedes Plutonium promoted the “Plutonium Atom Totality” theory, asserting the universe is a giant plutonium atom.
- •MI5Victim (Mike Corley) alleged MI5 harassment, was banned via Google, reportedly removed by ISPs in England, and inspired a 2007 opera in London; Jack Sarfatti is noted for iconoclastic ideas in works on quantum physics and consciousness.